the United States; and that he had lost his claim by his own laches. But since the decision of the case of Cruz Cervantes, Mr. Iturbide, on the score of usage and custom, it is reported, has filed a claim to an extent of four hundred miles of land along the left bank of the Sacramento river; a portion of the finest land in Californa. And how many more old and neglected grants this decision may bring to light, it is hard to imagine. We say nothing here of the extensive field for perjury, which this decision lays open, or the facilities it affords to the native ex-officials to manufactnre and speculate in inchoate Mexican land grants, for such a reflection must suggest itself to every reader of that decision. As the novelty of our age is California- the country where the Anglo-Saxon race for the first time came into the possession of gold fields, and where it is already demonstrating that the value of gold has arisen from the circumstances of it heretofore being found only in regions of the earth, inhabited by enervated and inefficient races of men ; where unstable governments and the cupidity of rulers checked enterprise, and prevented the ingress of a more enterprising race. For though gold was found in California by Captain Smith of Bodago, in 1842, yet he had felt too keenly in his own person, the treachery and brutality of those worthless cowards, who styled themselves constitutional governors of California, to avail himself of his discovery, without direct assistance from the city of Mexico; and failing in obtaining this, he sold in Baltimore the specimens he had dug, at sixteen dollars an ounce, and abandoned his enterprise. But the establishment of the American arms on the shore of the Pacific, has changed the world's history. That which was only floating about in tradition soon became reality by an accidental discovery. There was then no let or hindrance in the way of the gold-digger pursuing his arduous, but profitable calling-there were no laws or regulations to hinder his work, but such as his own experience, and the common consent of miners imposed on him. The whole country was open to him. For in all private, as well as in the public lands, the mines and minerals still belonged to the government. Such were the beginnings, out of which individual effort has accomplished such wonderful results-so wonderful, (where ten tons of gold are now monthly added to the circulation of the world) that all things connected with such a country are interesting-its laws, the decisions of its judges, and the history of its “patriarchal state," and for this reason I have added in a note sketches from its early history. R. A. WILSON. JANUARY, 1853. CONTENTS OF NOTES AND APPENDIX. The Law of Transfer of Shares, . SECOND ERRATA. In Stearling vs. Hanson, page 478, for third paragraph of head note read as follows: Page 583, line 1, read de before Jesus; on same page line 9, read Francisco before "Guerrero." |